


Embodiment

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: The Fool, The Knight, The Knave [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 06:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10431168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: If you're in need of a body to possess, try and do it somewhere other than a swamp. Marsh. Whatever.Or - the team medic makes use of an ancient Nevarran art, because this is above his pay grade. Or advocates for the use of said art. He just throws magic at people.(No one dies in this fic, one of the focus characters just starts off undead and it's a problem).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slightly edited re-post of my favorite and weirdest fic of mine. Any subtext is completely accidental and unfortunate. Well, by rights it should be. I think I managed to remove all of it. Also, Ketti is genderfluid which is why her pronouns change in the fic.

Ketti stared at the door and the walking corpse framed in the door. There was a squelch from somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the corpse and the warden winced (expressively - Tabris was in general expressive). Though the squelch had just been Justice’s boots, so far as Anders could tell. It hadn’t been raining, but, well, the Blackmarsh was a swamp.

The main room at the Keep was more or less empty, looking strangely desolate with the fire banked for the evening, the shadows between kegs and pillars stretching off into the heart of the vastness and cold indifference of the Keep. Ketti had stated with all confidence that they would get back to hot meals and relative safety before sunset, but dragons - even dead ones - had a unique talent for throwing a branch under the wheels. Nathaniel had left to find Velanna and (supposedly - Anders rather thought that he had ulterior motives, the old dog) get her magical insight on the matter of the walking corpse, and being Nathaniel would probably show back up. Oghren had left the keep altogether for the city, stating that he’d done enough slogging through and around weird shit for the Warden. Ketti had just given him a long-suffering look bordering on fondness as the dwarf walked out the front door, though he’d raised eyebrows in acknowledgement and smiled at Anders’ sarcastic plea for Oghren to not get eaten by anything on the road. Anders, being as curious as the cats he was so fond of, just stood to the side and pretended to read his grimoire, wanting the chance to see how the Warden acted while relatively alone. After all, Anders himself couldn’t be a significant variable.

“Ah,” Ketti started, once Oghren was out of earshot. “We’ll, ah, find you a room.”

“Thank you,” Justice said, without much inflection.

“Did you ever have one? In the Fade? Or did you just march across it, literally never stopping looking for people or whatever to smite?”

“I have no need for sleep, and prior to now no need to pretend,” Justice replied, as Anders wondered if he was imagining the bite to his controlled, deep voice. Not much expression to betray him, of course. He just looked grim, and - oddly, considering the lack of a pulse - rather like a kicked puppy.

“We’ll find a room,” Ketti said.

“He could stay in the armory, with the armor stands. He’d fit in,” Anders said brightly. It was only when Ketti shot him a sullen, judgemental look and Justice managed to join in despite permanently looking like that that it occurred to Anders that he’d treated the spirit like a walking curiosity, and that (as usual) he had no idea why he had.

“Or a room is fine. Welcome home.”

Justice just emanated ‘I very much hope not’ without bothering to look at him.

On the way to their own respective rooms, Ketti told Anders, “Lucky for you that a mage has a short leash for ‘weird’ or else I would give him lodging next to you.”

“Not lucky for me, actually.”

Ketti looked contrite.

*

It was fortunate that Anders didn’t care much for their new guardian spirit. There was dealing with, say, Oghren and his complete lack of self-preservation (not that the healer cared a rat’s ass for the dwarf, saddeningly easy source of conversation or not) and then there was -  
This.

Justice was sitting heavily on a log and Anders was trying to return some of his intestines to where they were supposed to be and stitch the wound closed.

It was a unique experience. The sole upside Anders could find was that it involved less pressure than any surgery he’d performed before. Justice, instead of screaming or cursing, watching with polite if put-upon patience. Death was an increasingly normal part of his life, but the moment itself had always been in its own way sterile, there and gone in a way he could try to pretend was a bad dream, and even the immediate necessity of kill or be killed paled in comparison to - this. Maybe if he’d been permitted to stay home on his parents’ farm instead of being locked up in a stone tower, he’d be more comfortable with decay. Still, his skin was clammy with horror, and Nathaniel had been making a disgusted face about the whole deal the entire time.

“This seems very tedious,” Justice observed.

“Well, yes, you’re not doing any of the work. Wait.” Anders grimaced. Creation magic would do no good here. “Can you, ah. Feel any of this.”

“Since he’s letting you poke at his gut and he’s not screaming, probably not,” Sigrun said.

“It’s not pleasant,” Justice said. “But I think it’s less pleasant for you.”

“Good, if that’s the case,” Anders said, “because I have an idea that might help you. And me.” He hooked off the sinew and then looked at his hand and grimaced, lip curling up.

“Do I need help?”

“Maybe the twitching and emaciation will become fashionable,” Sigrun chirped.

“I suppose you are quite right, if you mean that’s not going to happen.”

“Now let’s just hope that I’m not the one who has to actually help,” Anders said. He let a controlled, hot flame lick out of his hands for a moment, ridding them of the worst of the dull blackish blood and the gore.

Justice somehow emanated disapproval again.

*

Aniketos didn’t react like the idea were mad or absurd, which made sense as he - voluntarily, for some odd reason - spent more time than probably any of them close to the spirit. He did act like the idea was a bit depraved, wrinkling his button nose at it.

“You’re probably right.”

That wasn’t a phrase Anders heard often enough.

“I hate to say it -” Tabris never really acted perturbed by his own actions, whatever they happened to be. “But you’ve volunteered yourself and your evident expertise.”

“Living people, Warden. I heal, which requires something for me to save. Whatever Justice is - he’d probably argue the semantics with me, but Kristoff is definitely not alive.”

“Should we go ask Nathaniel?”

“Rangers work with animals. At least I hope.”

“And that’s all of us here. So now you’re waiting with baited breath for my brilliant solution?”

“I’m waiting with held breath, that’s for sure.”

“Be nice to Justice.”

“Why? He thinks I’m an idiot.”

“He’s not the only one with a claim to that opinion,” Ketti said, and held up a hand to signify that he didn’t. Anders assumed. Anders would like to assume. “And he treats you as as much a person as he does Nathaniel or me. That’s,” and he looked genuinely regretful about it, “rare in your average mundane shem, even a dead one who … doesn’t really fit that description at all.”

Anders crossed his arms in annoyance, but he couldn’t argue the point once it was brought to light.

*

Anders and the rest of the Grey Wardens continued to hunt darkspawn while the Warden-Commander took care of things. Anders assumed he’d set Seneschal Varrel on this particular task. And so a couple of weeks and a lot of minor but unpleasant surgeries (one would think that a dead man would be low-maintenance for a doctor but Anders’ gift that made him a healer in the first place was useless for the damned ungrateful spirit) later, Ketti appeared in the mess and dragged Justice and a protesting Anders into her office.

“I found a coroner,” she said in a tone much brighter than that phrase warranted.

“And he didn’t run screaming from the idea?” Anders asked.

“How did you convince them of our plan?” Justice asked. Though Anders suspected that he was nervous about the procedure, and who could blame him, really, he didn’t sound it.

Anders was nervous. Wasn’t exactly sure why.

“I’m the Warden-Commander. Everyone wants to help me. Also, I think she was under the impression that I’d conscript her if she didn’t.”

“We would not,” Justice said, not quite a question.

Ketti grinned like she very much would, then relented and nodded in agreement.

“Sure she’s not a blood mage looking to get around some Chantry sanctions?” Anders asked without intent or ire.

“If she is, I’m sure that Justice can handle her. Or I’ll use my heroic intuition and come to the rescue. By conscripting her, of course.”

*

Anders was thinking, of his own will, on something unpleasant over breakfast. He liked to think that it was just nosiness and not a sense of responsibility, because, again, dead things weren’t a healer’s responsibility. Even in times like these. And very few things were his responsibility. He tried very hard at not trying.

(The irony of the both of them giving up on the other as a lost cause had occurred to him - he just didn’t let it occur to him in daylight hours. Not least because while he considered Justice’s myriad problems to be due to what he was, Justice’s low opinion seemed to be due to who Anders was, his choices. And so somehow that strangeness made Justice’s apparent disinterest in spending time with him hurt more, actually. Not that he actually wanted to spend any more time with the dead guy and his lectures and prying questions).

(It didn’t occur to him that many of his own questions could be considered prying).

(Or that Justice might ever find - or realize - reason to change his mind, that there were reasons to be found).

“I almost wish something like this had happened before, as weird as that is. What if my plan fails? Ketti won’t be happy about that.”

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think the Warden is going to blame you for not knowing necromancy.”

“Probably true … There are a lot of things that are just. I mean, how did we even get here? This isn’t a normal job. This isn’t normal for a not-normal job.”

Nathaniel gave him a Look. It was skeptical, but all of Nathaniel’s looks were like that, and it could also have been a little alarmed.

“What, you don’t think I trust our fearless leader and their creepy favorite?”

“It wouldn’t matter to me either way.”

Except that it would matter - Anders was kind enough not to point that out. Because he appreciated it.

“That’s not it, anyway. How does Justice work - don’t answer that. How does the spirit of Justice do anything? He can’t feel pain, how does he fight? That’s a pretty important sense. His eyes aren’t in good shape, his host is dead, how does he see anything? And even if that’s all magic, how does he, you know, do expressions? It’d have to be a pain to do all that manually.” Shit, I’ve had this body for decades and I still sometimes trip going down stairs, Anders thought but did not say. He supposed he was glad something was looking out for the spirit, even if it was just blind luck.

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Would you want a pissed-off Warden-Commander on your arse?”

“No,” Nathaniel said, “but I don’t know about you.”

“Haha, very funny.”

“Anders,” he said, “relax. I don’t think Justice is very attached to his pretty face.”

Anders stabbed glumly at his food, appetite gone.

*

They (Anders and Nathaniel - the latter because he counted himself Justice’s friend, and Ketti probably thought him the most sensible of the three) smuggled Justice into the coroner’s by the simple expedient of having him wear a full suit of armor. He suffered impatiently through Nate’s insistence on helping him with the more fiddly bits. Didn’t want to lose a finger before they even got there, Anders cracked.

The citizens of Amaranthine had adjusted to the presence of Tabris’ undead companion with remarkable aplomb, but Ketti didn’t want to risk the coroner getting undue attention, all the same.

*

The mortician seemed somewhat scared of Nathaniel’s dour mood until Justice took off his helm, assuming that the mortician was one of those people he could attempt painfully learned mortal etiquette around.

“Hi, we’re the apparitions of noble favor present, here to bring helpful and devout Andrastians heresy.” Anders said, gesturing at Justice.

“Shut up,” Nate whispered.

“You do not know that she is Andrastian,” Justice pointed out, his voice incongruously normal.

On the bright side, Anders might have managed to distract the mortician from the reality of the walking corpse. On the less bright but more familiar to Anders, the mortician was visibly wondering if the Warden-Commander had just sent them all to get them all away from her.

“I knew about the heresy beforehand, thanks,” the woman said. “Do you two have any special knowledge of the issue?”

Nate made sure to glance at Anders at that question. Arsehole.

“Not as much as we’d like,” Anders admitted.

“And I’m a ranger, not a - whatever it is we need.”

“Ah,” the mortician said, slowly and without hope.

*

Nathaniel didn’t leave right away. He and the mortician talked, the conversation giving Anders a vivid preview of the rest of the process, turning his stomach. The mortician poked and prodded at Justice a bit, gauntlets being shed along with the helmet.

Nathaniel excused himself on the solid grounds that there wasn’t anything he could do for a friend who had, in a manner of speaking, never been human.

“Aren’t you going to stay and provide moral support? You’re his friend, you know.”

Nathaniel clapped Anders on the shoulder on his way out. “That is exactly why I’m not staying.”

Anders felt very, very uncomfortable, standing near the doorway, no friends in sight and the supposed expert, and as the situation was equally somber and absurd he reached for some defense and found nothing. Justice was watching him expectantly. If the damned spirit could - would - show more discomfort, Anders wouldn’t feel quite so alone. Well. He’d had better company in worse places.

He felt very alone. He wondered how Justice felt. If he weren’t perturbed by Anders’ plan, Anders supposed, Anders could run naked and screaming from the place and the spirit wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

“Well. Let’s get on with this, then,” the mortician said.

“So …” Anders tapped his fingers against his thigh. The mortician had dragged another chair into the operation room for him and shoved it into the corner. “I’m a healer, not an anatomist. Do you have a plan?”

“Just what your commander hired me to do. No use borrowing trouble. Your friend is - he’s aware of what this entails? He’s not - he’s safe?”

“Most of my patients at least swear at me. If they don’t flail or hit me or yell ‘maleficar!’. All he does is give disapproving glares and stink. You’ll be fine.”

“Then why are you so nervous?”

At Anders’ blank look, the mortician clarified, “You’re fidgeting.”

“Well, just because he’s not a ravening monster doesn’t mean that nothing’s going to go wrong.”

“Don’t want the Commander blaming you for messing up the job?”

“Hmm.”

Justice emerged from the adjacent room, and Anders very quickly looked at the ceiling (though the image of him awkwardly holding his tunic around his waist was pretty funny - funny, too, the things you got used to in this job). Anders wondered how much of his modesty was from Kristoff, if Kristoff had been a prude, and how much was from the others’ flinching reactions to his physical presence, Sigrun often the only one tactless, or kind, enough to spell it out for him. Anders wondered how long it would take him to stop finding absolutely inappropriate ways of relating to and understanding the stranded spirit.

Justice tried to imitate a cough, loudly.

It was just as much an absurd tableau as Anders had expected. 

“Lie down on the table,” the mortician said.

Justice did, clouded eyes patiently trained on the mortician.

“You look stiff, Justice,” Anders joked.

The mortician must have had a streak of Ketti in her, as she dealt with the situation by listing out the procedure aloud, musing to herself as he did so. Anders, to give himself something to do with his hands, got up from his stool and began to sort the instruments. It would have looked a proper shop of horrors to someone from a different school of healing, but Anders hadn’t used much more than needle and thread in the way of material components, the classroom that Wynne had presided over a dusty collection of diagrams and treatises and some of these same instruments but covered in that same dust, and the templars had never reached more sophistication in their tools than the cat o’ nine tails, nor had they needed to. The mortician snapped out an order for a scalpel, and Anders handed it over, thinking that his bedside manner was better.

“Anders says that healers are ‘in demand’ in this world,” Justice said, and the mortician started a bit despite herself.

‘Anders says’ was an extension of the ‘the Warden-Commander says’ game that had started shortly after Justice had landed in their world, and had only started recently. Ketti claimed that it meant that Justice cared about his opinion. It reminded Anders of his former fellow inmates trying to get him into trouble with the enchanters from his apprentice days.

“I’m not a healer,” the mortician said.

“But you take broken things, and put them together again. What’s the difference?”

“She doesn’t save lives. You can hook up all the pieces but that doesn’t mean you can make them tick again. It’s like - well, it is, doing craft but not magic. Only magic can save lives if you’re gone far enough. Because people aren’t objects.” Anders’ voice revealed some of his bitterness about how far Justice had yet to go to understand any of this.

“Which is - not a concern with me.”

The mortician hummed in agreement. “You have your own magic.”

There was the soft sound of leather parting, and Anders winced.

“Stop fidgeting,” the mortician said.

“He doesn’t fidget, he’s a corpse.”

“He’s trying to look inside his ribcage.”

“It is my body.”

“Not technically.”

“You’ve looked inside m - the body.”

“That’s because I’m your healer - sort of - and also because the people or things who put those holes in you in the first place didn’t care about botching the job. And we do. For some reason.”

“Mark me down as being terrified of your Commander.”

“Well, I will listen to the craft healer.”

“I’m flattered,” Anders said, turning around and pushing Justice’s head back down to the table. Justice went still.

“You found him in a swamp?”

“Yes. Don’t do your shopping in a swamp anymore, Justice.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

Anders felt himself smile. Maybe Justice had started to pay some attention to Nathaniel, too.

“Speaking of …” The mortician coughed politely. “This isn’t permanent. This isn’t close to permanent. I hope you two know that?”

“Anders has made that abundantly clear.”

As surprising as it could seem to some, Anders’ aptitude for healing was not just a flame of magic like a bonfire, and a lure to spirits despite all the distrust the Chantry could instill - that lure was one expression of a soul that reached ferociously out towards others despite a lifetime of isolation. And, when needed, it could provide a fair decent bedside manner. Impulsively, he reached down and pressed his fingers into Justice’s shoulder in a gesture between a pat and a comforting squeeze. The spirit seemed to ignore the attention.

“Are you going to give that back?” Justice asked politely.

“In a moment,” the mortician said, holding a severed heart.

Anders very quickly found something else to do with his hands. Justice apparently did not need his kind of help. Maybe the withered dead fingers curled over the edge of the table like claws were there only to give them somewhere to be.


End file.
